Objekt des Monats
Jedes Objekt in der Sammlung des Deutschen Auswandererhauses erzählt eine ganz persönliche Auswanderungs- oder Einwanderungsgeschichte. In dieser Rubrik stellen wir Ihnen jeden Monat ein anderes Objekt vor – eine Fotografie, ein Dokument oder ein persönliches Erinnerungsstück.
March 2018
Jewelry box of jeweler Roy W. Johnston at The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel New York, around 1940
Historical Context
Every year on March 8th, International Women’s Day is celebrated. The spotlight is on women’s voting rights, economic independence, and their societal contributions in many countries around the world. Attention is also drawn to women who still suffer from oppression, coercion, and violence.
The small red jewelry box represented a symbol of achievement for Bremerhaven resident Else Arnecke in New York during the 1930s: the rise from a simple waitress to an accountant at the luxury hotel Waldorf-Astoria. The piece of jewelry she purchased from jeweler “Roy W. Johnston” at the Waldorf-Astoria has been lost, but she preserved the jewelry box throughout the years.
Like many other women in the 20th century, Else Arnecke achieved her professional ascent through a second educational path: After long shifts as a service staff member at the restaurant “The Savarin,” she attended a junior college in New York four evenings a week, where she took courses in shorthand, typing, and economics. Evening schools were initiated by the labor movement in both Europe and the USA at the end of the 19th century and provided many women and men with careers that would have otherwise been denied to them.
Short Biography
Else Arnecke was born in Bremerhaven in 1911. The city was an emigration port: Over 7.2 million Europeans set off from here for overseas. At the age of 18, she emigrated to New York herself. There, she initially worked as an au pair, before starting as a waitress in the newly opened Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in 1931. After successfully attending evening school, she switched to accounting in 1936, where she prepared hotel bills for numerous famous people, including the Duke of Windsor and his wife Wallis. In 1942, she returned to Germany in the midst of war for her sick mother, a decision she often regretted – she could not cope with the ‘Nazis’. After her mother’s death, she went back to New York in 1951, where she continued to work as an accountant in the most luxurious hotels: the Waldorf-Astoria, the St. Regent, and the Carlyle. In 1971, she returned to Bremerhaven, where she died in 2009.
Meaning of the Object
The small red box is a very personal keepsake of a woman who was proud of what she had achieved: She could afford a piece of jewelry from a jeweler in one of the best hotels in the world. Without education, without wealthy parents, she managed to build a career in the 1930s – in a foreign country, in a foreign language. For this, she invested a lot: initially years of juggling work and evening school, later countless overtime and hardly any private life. She wouldn’t have accomplished that in Germany; looking back, she wrote about America: ‘… the country that welcomed me so warmly in my youth. The country that shaped my life, the country that was good to me.’
Do you also …
… to tell a story of emigration or immigration from your family and wish to hand over the related objects and documents to the Deutsches Auswandererhaus for its collection? Then please contact Dr. Tanja Fittkau at the phone number 0471 / 90 22 0 – 0 or via email at: t.fittkau@dah-bremerhaven.de
Archive: Previous Objects of the Month
Show all objectsDo You Also Have …
… a story of emigration or immigration in your family that you would like to share with the German Emigration Center together with the related objects and documents for its collection? Then please contact Dr. Tanja Fittkau by phone at +49 471 / 90 22 0 – 0
or by e-mail at: t.fittkau@dah-bremerhaven.de